29/07/2012

On Being A Lady Smuggler

The levelling duo consisting of my smuggler and my recently referred friend's trooper is coming along nicely. The other night we finished chapter one of both of our class stories.

I won't review the smuggler story until I've completed all of it, but I just wanted to write about a few things that amused me about being a female smuggler. Be warned that this post will contain a couple of spoilers on the subject of romance in Act I.

Maybe I'm slowly overcoming my ineptitude when it comes to Bioware romances, or maybe the female smuggler is just better written, but she's been the first character on which flirting frequently actually felt natural to me. To be fair, it might have something to do with the fact that I've already seen more flirt action in chapter one than all of my other female characters ever experienced combined. When your character never even gets the chance to flirt until you're suddenly confronted with the option to hit on a random quest NPC thirty levels later, it just feels weird. I think it's safe to say that the lady smuggler doesn't have this problem. For extra funsies, your first companion, Corso Riggs, immediately crushes on you and then makes snarky comments every time you flirt with someone else, which makes for some great entertainment on its own.

For example I was most amused by how annoyed he got over my flirting with a young noble on Alderaan. When it actually came to visiting said noble again with the prospect of some BSOCK action, I was actually quite torn about whether to bring Corso along purely to antagonise him for my amusement, but in the end I decided that it would make me feel too guilty and wasn't going to be worth the affection loss. Long story short, Bowdaar is a better wingman anyway. "I'll just be going outside. I wanted to look at the trees anyway!" And he gives you some affection for it to boot.

The absolute highlight of flirting hilarity however was the final confrontation at the end of Act I. To be honest, I had been dreading it a little, because I was worried that it was going to end with the death of my arch-enemy... and I actually kind of liked him. He may have tried to kill me repeatedly, but our conversations were always fun. I didn't want to be rid of him.

Imagine my delight when we faced off against each other one last time, and I was given the option to flirt with him as he was pointing a blaster at my head. I couldn't resist, and before you know it my smuggler and her nemesis were sucking face on a derelict spaceship in the middle of nowhere, while Corso was presumably sitting in a corner, developing a nervous eye twitch and covering his ears while shouting "lalala, I can't hear you". There was a BSOCK which implied even more action, though considering the circumstances of the situation, I'm not sure I want to contemplate the issue any further as it would imply that my character is borderline insane.

Too bad that my frenemy still wanted to kill me after I told him that I was keeping the treasure. However, by that point I felt that I had got some very humorous closure to our relationship.

The only romance option that still confounds me a little at this point is Corso. I can see why people like him, as he has an easygoing boyish charm that reminds me a little of Alistair from Dragon Age (who was very popular with the ladies as well). However, Corso is also annoyingly sexist. It's somewhat mitigated by the fact that he frequently shows that he doesn't actually think of women as in any way inferior or less competent. He's just insistent that there are some things that they should and shouldn't be doing based on what his parents taught him. Mind you, you get the option to tell him off every time he goes on about it, but it's still annoying. All I want to do is sit him down and tell him to use his brain for once, as the stuff he has been taught obviously doesn't match the reality he lives in, but I'm doubtful that the game will allow me to go there. As it stands I'm not quite sure where to take things with the lad, friendly as he is.

Flirting is more natural to a Smuggler, but that's because the Smuggler is based on the rascally rogue Han Solo. I can't imagine Solo without is snark and flirting.

Well, that's Skaavik for you. He thinks he can charm the birds out of the trees.

On a male Smuggler, it's Risha who makes all the snarky comments, but I've kept her on the ship so those comments are at a minimum.

I like Bowdaar, but he has the unfortunate bad timing of tossing enemies into the next mob, aggroing them. I keep Corso around, not because of anything special, but because he can hold aggro fairly well.

This is the first post ever where I encounter the term "frenemy" lol - I have to keep that in mind! :D

I always liked flirtatious characters (and emotes), however it sounds as if SWTOR accomplishes this character type a lot better than MMOs do in general (as opposed to RPGs à la DAO where it's quite common a choice). but then that's not surprising given that quest narrative and choices are this game's forte.

My biggest mistake playing a smuggler was feeling GUILTY about flirting with other guys because of Corso the puppy dog, and I basically avoided a LOT of BSOCK opportunities. I've decided that if I level another smuggler, I'm going to sleep with EVERYONE. Even Darmas Polleran.

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